At our quarterly administrators meeting today, Alison Atkins Denton gave a demo of the web site for the Illinois Public Library GIS Project. It reminded me of why I am so entranced by Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The Illinois State Library sponsored a grant to the GIS Lab at the Illinois Institute of Technology to determine the boundaries of all public library districts in the State. The ultimate goal is to determine which areas are unserved and don't receive library service. It's a very cool project, and I still think there is a way to use GIS to visually display library metrics (database hits, web site hits, foot traffic, circulation, reference questions, program registrations, bookmobile stops, etc.).

On a side note, the administrators in attendance today held a lively discussion of the non-resident library card debate because Illinois legislators have mandated that public libraries have to opt-in or opt-out of selling library cards to non-residents for whom they are the closest library. If the library opts-out, they become ineligible for construction grants. I don't know enough about this to comment on the law and its ramifications but at one point today, the debate centered around patrons that purchase a card at a particular library and then rack up bills at a different library. This is a point of contention because the library that sold the card is ultimately responsible for reimbursement of items not returned by that patron.

So some librarians don't want to sell non-resident cards because of the potential liability for those items. Listening to the debate today, it sounded much like recent blanket statements by entertainment industry execs that their customers are thieves. One person disputed the view of non-residents as potential thieves, saying that general experience suggests these folks "aren't exactly pulling up in Winnebagos."

So a gentle reminder to librarians that our patrons are not the enemy. That's an extra heaping of reminder for entertainment industry execs, too.